thakur@eddie.mit.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur) (09/22/90)
Warning: serious *SPOILERS* for Total Recall
I'm a science fiction fan (a "serious" one, whatever that means), and
would like a deeper discussion of Total Recall than has occured in the
other newsgroups. Particularly, the "was it real or was it a dream"
question interests me. It seemed to me that, although it was a
typical Arnold S. blood&action flick, the P. K. Dick theme, that you
cannot know what is real and what is not, was done very nicely. I've
tried to mentally compile a list of things in the movie that "changed
reality" as the story progressed, and the list is long. Despite the
"summer movie" style of this film, I submit that the spirit of _We Can
Remember It for You Wholesale_ was faithfully rendered in Total
Recall.
Here is my current list of what you first see vs. what happens later
(some are what you think second/what happens later):
Arnold on Mars (opening scene) Arnold dreaming
Wall in apartment TV screen
Sweet wife Bad guy's girlfriend
A's buddy at work Secret agent (bad guy)
A. = Mr. middle class A = Secret agent (good guy)
Previous A. = Good guy Previous A. = Bad guy
Fat tourist lady Arnold
"Normal" Taxi driver Mutant (good guy)
Bar/Brother Undergound "front"
Generic underground guy Mutant underground leader
Mutant (good guy) Taxi driver Fink
Two closing comments:
1) The whole thing is, in actual reality, a film! Arnold S.
playing with P. K. Dick's story which was intended to play with
our sense of reality. Twice removed from reality at least.
2) All of the "where the dream started" answers in the other
newsgroups fail to explain the opening sequence where A. and
the dark-haired lady are on Mars. My guess is that the
opening scene is the only real one--all the rest is Arnold
hallucinating from the effects (pun intended) of oxygen
deprivation. The white light at the end of the movie is the
"near death" experience leading to his real death by explosive
decompression :-).
Dennis Pelton
att.com!ncsc6!dgp